“She pressed me to take it. My dear Mr. Canterton, how was I to know?”
“Of course not.”
He was amused by her emphatic innocence, especially when, by dragging in Eve Carfax’s name, he could have suggested to her that he knew she was lying.
“You see, my wife knows nothing about flowers—what is valuable, and what isn’t.”
Mrs. Brocklebank began to boom.
“My dear Mr. Canterton, how can you expect it? I think it is very unreasonable of you. In fact, you ought to mark valuable flowers, so that other people should know.”
He smiled at her quite charmingly.
“I suppose I ought. I suppose I am really the guilty party. Only, you see, my garden is really a shop, a big general store. And in a shop it is not supposed to be necessary to put notices on certain articles, ‘This article is not to be appropriated.’”
“Mr. Canterton!”
She took the rose out of her belt, and in doing so purposely broke the stalk off close to the calyx.